Hi, Barbara Roberts!
I have worked with church choirs for over 30 years now. The same thing you
describe with your sopranos happens also with altos, tenors and basses, I'm
afraid. There is a "rule" in choir singing that if you can't hear the voicese on
either side of yourself, you're singing too loudly. If choir members will
concentrate on doing more "listening", a thing that is nearly impossible for
some older singers to do, by the way, the choral blend will improve.
The sopranos most often hear choirmasters give the instruction "Take the vibrato
out of your voices", which non-voice-trained, keyboard people jump onto like a
bug on a windshield. The thought here is that this will immediately improve
choral blend. The "desired" tone is the boy treble type tone currently touted
by The Royal School of Church Music and John Rutter's Cambridge Singers. High
Episcopal parishes tend to send their keyboard folks to England once a year for
a "re-charge" at the RSCM training event there. One prominent organist with a
pinch of RSCM informed me that he tells the sopranos to "take the bel canto out"
of their voices and recently fired a choir member who couldn't do this. He then
informed me that putting the offensive soprano in the alto section would "solve"
the problem. The singer will suffer from singing in the wrong tessitura. The
St. Olaf Choir was the leading proponent of this "choral sound" back in the 50s,
60s, and 70s. Boy trebles have a natural vibrato in their voices, but are a
short-term investment in that the boy voices change more quickly now than ever
before. Choirmasters, like many of our voice students, want a "microwave"
solution to having this "sound" and nuking their soprano section is often their
solution, but, according to Larra Browning Henderson and William Vennard (for
those who don't remember, Vennard was Marilyn Horne's voice teacher) the
practice of instructing soprano choir members to remove the vibrato from their
voices is damaging and Henderson directly decries this stating that no singer
should imitate the voice of another singer.
Each choir section has its own particular set of challenges. Short-ranged
sopranos find themselves busier than one-armed paper-hangers when they attempt
to match the tone of a mezzo-soprano, contralto or counter-tenor voice. Their
voices simply lack the rich tone of the mezzo and contralto. The size of the
counter-tenor voice is less threatening to the short-range soprano, but they're
just as puzzled with regard to what they need to do to "match tones". I had in
two different choirs, a counter-tenor of the Alfred Deller-type sound (NOT a
David Daniels sound). In another choir, I had a mezzo-soprano with a beautiful,
warm and rich tone. In each instance, one heard two tones emitting from the
alto section: one rich and warm, the other light and breathy!
Tenor sections are fraught with lyric, spinto, dramatic and heldentenor (God
forbid!) voices, but more commonly are filled with "bari-tens" who are pushed-up
baritones who sing tenor because the choir director needs voices on the part and
"whisky" or "neck-tie" tenors who produce a nasal, whining tone somewhat akin to
a domestic cat with a 200 lb. man standing on its tail. I worked with one who
could out screech a 350 member congregation, 22 voice choir and a 25 rank North
German Baroque pipe organ. Cassette tapes made for shut-ins sounded like this
screeching voice with a back-up group (the choir and congregation) and
accompaniment (the pipe organ)! The late Norman Luboff told me that I should
"fire" this singer and remove him from the choir. He sang in that choir until
he died in 12/01 at the age of 93! It is very hard for the trained professional
to totally re-train a volunteer choir member who has no interest in being
re-trained.
Bass sections have the issue of basses (rarer, but still out there),
bass-baritones and baritones attempting to blend. If the choir has all
baritones, it will, depending on the choral selection, sound like there is "no
bottom" on the sound. One bass-baritone with a fairly strong voice can
transform the section.
The "team" approach and sectional socializing go a long way to improve the sound
of the entire group. Whether it's a large pot of chicken noodle soup or hot
spiced tea, the sopranos, altos, tenors and basses the singers need to work
together as a team to accomplish a good choral (vocal) tone!
Hope this helps!
Ed
Barb Roberts <mikebarb@n...> wrote:Hello
I was reading on Opera-L a series of e-mail on the subject of "squillo"
or ring. One poster alluded that some, Miller especially, equate
this ring to "the singer's Formant of 2800 Hz" except for certain
voices that lack this formant, notably high, light sopranos. These
voices have a different kind of ring. (How different?) I started to
think (Dangerous, perhaps?)
I also have wondered (for years) about the poor choral blend from the
soprano section of the in the small church choir I sing in. Certainly
differences in vocal technique (or lack thereof) have been factors.
Thus, I always had hope that a combination of training or new recruits
could eventually alleviate problems. However, I after reading the post
on the other list, I began to wonder again if inherent differences
between light and heavier soprano voices could be a factor too? It does
seem to me that it is the lightest, brightest soprano voices that have
the greatest difficulty with blending with our larger, more somewhat
more dramatically voiced soprano. It can be bad.
Perhaps, I should also add that I am a lyric soprano. My voice is
light, but not real light. It is the only on the highest pitches that I
that I personally think that I don't blend well. On high notes our
large-voiced soprano can produces sounds with overtones that rings
above and below below whatever I happen to sing with a tone that is
both darker and more brilliant. Sometimes I feel as if I have lost the
core of whatever note we are singing, and that I have landed on either
the sharp / shrill side and at other times the flat side of the note.
Very disconcerting. The only soprano who blended well with everyonme in
the choir was a lyric soprano with a warmish-toned voice.
Any thoughts?
Barbara Roberts
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